low sun everything in black & white
--Mark Gilbert (Nottingham, UK)

***

The station
flooded with white masks
morning rush
--Satoru Kanematsu (Nagoya)

***

White mask--
can’t smell the perfume
of jasmine
--Angela Giordano (Avigliano, Italy)

***

Cold tofu
slips down my throat
early dinner
--Murasaki Sagano (Tokyo)

***

White T-shirt on jeans
long baguette under her arm
an ideal partner
--Masumi Orihara (Atsugi, Kanagawa)

***

blue iris
white violet
cloudier
--Fatma Gultepe (Ankara, Turkey)

***

each poppy
filled with one bumblebee
milky white sky
--Helga Stania (Ettiswil, Switzerland)

***

happy hour
the bee's dizzy circles
around my cocktail
--Kristen Lindquist (Camden, Maine)

***

Aegean island
reflections of white houses
in the sea
--Tsanka Shishkova (Sofia, Bulgaria)

***

straw hat--
a white butterfly
passes and disappears
--Maria Teresa Sisti (Massa Carrara, Italy)

------------------------------
FROM THE NOTEBOOK
------------------------------

Younger days
brought back by photos
black and white
--Satoru Kanematsu (Nagoya)

The haikuist added nostalgically, “thirty years have passed since I retired, and yet…” Madhuri Pillai dug deep during the 6-weeks long lockdown of Melbourne, Australia,

isolation...
unearthing old CDs
how time has fled

As a teenager, Meghan Elizabeth Jones wanted to learn tennis she said, “it seems an elegant sport with its bright tennis whites.” An all-white outfits rule for players was established at the 1890 Wimbledon Championships.

tennis whites flash
whip fast ball blazes past
missed

Pitt Buerken was at a loss how to referee stay-at-home rules for a rooftop match in his neighborhood.

roof terraces
two ladies playing tennis
from house to house

Angela Giordano will have laundry for the clothesline: white yoga pants--outdoor class on fresh grass.

Melanie Vance kept an eye on her laundry in Dallas, Texas. Jones recalled her mother “putting out crisply ironed white linen napkins for our table” in Calgary, Alberta.

sudden breeze
lifts my white linen skirt up and up
outdoor laundry

***

crisp white napkins
until the cherry pie
laughter all around

Amy Losak shared the next poem, as well as one that her mother Sydell Rosenberg (1929-1996) composed when they lived together in Queens.

downtown park
New Yorkers in tank tops
stuck to their skin

***

In their deep nest
the young reed warblers wait--
gasping with the heat

Kanematsu sensed a sweet smile. Murasaki Sagano has been wearing head-to-toe white all summer long in Tokyo.

A white mask
with his cheerful eyes
suntanned boy

***

“a must mask”
two unbuttoned white shirts
this summer

Ewa Kajtoch went for a swim in Krakow, Poland. Anne-Marie McHarg hid from the heat in London, UK. Barbara MacKay visited Yellowstone National Park.

Leaving
her sundress in
the shade

***

Ah! Such coolness--
Waterfall spray enfolds me
Heron under shade

***

my breath and vapor
rising from Mammoth Hot Springs
white on the winter air

Lilium Casablanca imbued Ramona Linke’s afternoon with a satisfying sense of serenity in Beesenstedt, Germany. Linden blossom tea is a relaxant with a sweet floral fragrance and hint of citrus.

white lilies
the warmth
of the tea

***

grandma's birthday
my path is lined with
blooming lindens

On impulse, Don Krieger penned this haiku for a contest organized during a 50th college reunion of alumni at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

stay-at-home order
drove the turnpike–no worries
my skin, passing white

A retired professor of surgery at the University of California Davis, Scott Hundahl, says he is meditating during this COVID-19-fueled summer because “the journey and home are indeed becoming one!” Daniela Misso remains self-isolated in her room at home in Umbria, Italy.

White blossoms
Shrouded weathered fence
Summer nest

***

the silence
of jasmine incense…
evening shadows

Stephen S. Power daydreamed for a moment in Maplewood, New Jersey. Noting how “it often happens during the afternoon rest in the summertime,” Luciana Moretto might want to be somewhere other than Treviso, Italy. Satoru Kanematsu considered the fate of children with nowhere to go.

wrapped in a warm breeze
the runner forgets
that he’s on first

***

circling in a shaft of sun
through the blinds
a fine silt of longing

***

sandy storm
refugee children
huddling up

Eugeniusz Zacharski watched over a flock of Polish Longwool sheep as billowing white clouds gave way to thunderheads. Ramona Linke counted from one to a hundred to ease her angst, and may have fallen asleep before she could pen a third line.

old shepherd
raises his head--
summer storm

***

white hydrangeas
we enumerate our fears

---------------------------------------------------------------

Summer white http://www.asahi.com/ajw/special/haiku/. The next issues of the Asahi Haikuist Network appear Sept. 4 and 18. Readers are invited to send haiku about a secret or a nagging concern on a postcard to David McMurray at the International University of Kagoshima, Sakanoue 8-34-1, Kagoshima, 891-0197, Japan, or email to (mcmurray@fka.att.ne.jp).

* * *

David McMurray has been writing the Asahi Haikuist Network column since April 1995, first for the Asahi Evening News. He is on the editorial board of the Red Moon Anthology of English-Language Haiku, columnist for the Haiku International Association, and is editor of Teaching Assistance, a column featuring graduate students in The Language Teacher of the Japan Association for Language Teaching (JALT).

McMurray is professor of intercultural studies at The International University of Kagoshima where he lectures on international haiku. At the Graduate School he supervises students who research haiku. He is a correspondent school teacher of Haiku in English for the Asahi Culture Center in Tokyo.

McMurray judges haiku contests organized by Ito En Oi Ocha, Asahi Culture Center, Matsuyama City, Polish Haiku Association, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Seinan Jo Gakuin University, and Only One Tree.

McMurray's award-winning books include: "Only One Tree Haiku, Music & Metaphor" (2015); "Canada Project Collected Essays & Poems" Vols. 1-8 (2013); and "Haiku in English as a Japanese Language" (2003).